When it comes to cheque hand-outs, the Trudeau government easily tops Harper’s record By David Akin Chief Political Correspondent

After just over two years in office, the Trudeau Liberals have made nearly 9,000 spending announcements, easily eclipsing the 7,300 spending announcements made during the four-year majority government of their predecessors, the Harper Conservatives.

The combined value of all those Liberal announcements made in just over two years stands at $34.27 billion versus the combined value of four years of Harper announcements at $45.14 billion.

Spending announcement database has logged 3,472 spending commitments in which Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi was the minister named on a federal government press release announcing the spending. But the department itself says it has approved spending on more than 4,000 infrastructure projects.

In fact, the largest cheque to be handed out in 2017 was for a single project in which the money will be spent across several ridings, and that cheque was delivered by the prime minister himself. On June 15, Trudeau visited Montreal to announce a federal commitment of nearly $1.3 billion to help build a light rail network.

The Global News database identified 523 spending announcements made since November 2015, worth a combined $7.2-billion, in which the project will benefit two or more ridings.

TRUDEAU’S LACK OF SPENDING FOR THE MILITARY

RIGA, Latvia — Canada has no plans to double the amount of money it spends on its military, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday as he all but shrugged off Donald Trump’s persistent demand that America’s fellow NATO allies start spending two per cent of their GDP on defence.

That two per cent target, agreed to in 2014 at the NATO summit in Wales, is just one of many ways to gauge a country’s commitment to the military alliance, Trudeau said on the eve of the summit’s 2018 edition in Brussels, where he’ll once again come face to face with the U.S. president.

But any increases in military spending will not come as a result of pressure to do so from “people talking about a two per cent goal,” he said when asked about Trump, but rather because of a desire to live up to the country’s commitments to its military allies around the world.

A new report released by NATO ahead of the summit predicted Canada would spend 1.23 per cent of its GDP on defence this year — less, it turns out, than last year’s level of 1.36 per cent, leaving Canada ranked 18th out of the alliance’s 29 members.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made. Will they reimburse the U.S.?

Canada has been squarely in the American president’s sights of late, and the NATO spending issue has proven no exception. He wrote Trudeau ahead of the summit expressing “growing frustration” with the fact the two per cent target is still not being met by the majority of alliance nations.

Just weeks ahead of the NATO summit U.S. President Donald Trump is calling on allies, including Canada, to increase defence spending on NATO.

It comes by way of a letter, obtained by iPolitics, written on White House letterhead and signed by Trump, that was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 19.

“There is growing frustration in the United States that key Allies like Canada have not stepped up defense spending as promised,” it reads.

“This frustration is not confined to our Executive Branch. The United States Congress has taken note and is concerned as well. The United States is increasingly unwilling to ignore this Alliance’s failure to meet shared security challenges.”

FEDERAL BUDGET 2018

Federal budget highlights: Twelve things you need to know

OTTAWA — The federal government is putting an emphasis on gender equality in the 2018 budget, but proposes only modest new spending as Canada’s economy continues to perform well.

Total new spending over the next year comes in at $5.4 billion, of $338.5 billion in overall planned spending.

In the federal Liberals’ first budget, in 2016, the word “gender” appeared twice. This time around, “gender” was used 358 times.

As expected, gender equality was a major theme of the 2018 federal budget, such that “every single decision on expenditure and tax measures was informed” by a gender-based analysis, according to the government.

This year’s budget is mostly in line with previous estimates from Finance Canada that, for the foreseeable future, the federal government will be running a deficit. Budget 2018 revises the government’s deficit projections downward by an average of $167-million each year compared with the fall update.

The budget proposes pay-equity legislation for employees in the federal government and federal-regulated sectors but fails to put a dollar amount on that plan. The legislation, which will draw on models from Ontario and Quebec, will ensure that men and women receive the same pay for equal work. The idea of same pay for equal work between male and female

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BUDGET 2018

The government is proposing $1.2-billion over five years to create a new five-week “use-it-or-lose-it” incentive for new fathers to take parental leave. The Employment Insurance Parental Sharing Benefit would increase EI parental leave to a maximum of 40 weeks in cases where the second parent agrees to take at least five weeks off. The benefit covers 55 per cent of the second parent’s income for as much as 12 months. The budget also proposes $90-million over three years to ensure that claimants continue to receive timely and accurate benefit payments, plus another $127.7-million over the same period to improve EI call-centre accessibility.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BUDGET 2018

REPRESENTATION OF INDIGENOUS AND NON-INDIGENOUS CHILDREN IN PRIVATE HOME FOSTER CARE

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The government is proposing to invest $447-million over five years to create a new Indigenous Skills and Employment Training Program. The program, which will replace the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy, will help close the employment and pay gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people by focusing on training for higher-quality, better-paying jobs.

The budget also proposes more than $1.4-billion over six years for First Nations child and family services. Indigenous children under the age of 14 comprise 7.7 per cent of all children in Canada but represent more than half of all children in foster care. The money will help alleviate pressures on child and family services agencies and increase prevention resources in First Nations communities so families can stay together.

How benefit payments would increase under Canada Workers Benefit:

Ottawa wants to increase the take-home pay of low-income workers through a revamped tax credit. The budget unveiled the Canada Workers Benefit, which takes effect in 2019 and is essentially a “more generous” and “more accessible” version of the Working Income Tax Benefit, according to the government. The proposal calls for maximum benefits to increase, as well as raising the income level at which the benefit is phased out. A single parent or couple earning $25,000 a year could receive as much as $717 more from the program in 2019 than in 2018.

. RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

In total, the budget commits $3.8-billion more over the next five years to support science. A large share of this will be aimed at stepping up funding in physical and life sciences, social sciences and health for fundamental research at universities and other institutions

More than $600-million of the new science funding will be directed toward beefing up the government’s own laboratories and bringing together federal scientific activities across departments.

CYBERSECURITY

The 2018 budget has allocated $508-million, spread out until 2022-23. The funds will be used primarily by the Communications Security Establishment to create a new Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, as well as a National Cybercrime Coordination Unit for the RCMP. In the weeks leading up to the budget, news reports suggested the government could invest as much as $1-billion in cybersecurity resources and infrastructure. Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Ottawa and an expert in cybersecurity, said he expects “they’ll spend a lot more than they’re suggesting” in the budget.

G7 SUMMIT FUNDING

Canada is planning to spend $594-million on its 2018 presidency of the G7 and the corresponding leaders’ summit it will host in Charlevoix, Que., this June, according to the budget. The funding will also cover security and logistics for other high-profile G7 ministerial meetings across Canada throughout 2018.

JOURNALISM

As expected, the government will explore ways for news outlets to benefit from non-profit status. It also proposed providing $50-million over five years to one or more non-governmental organizations supporting local journalism “in underserved communities.” The funding is far less than what some groups had wanted. News Media Canada, an association representing more than 800 outlets across the country, has called for a journalism fund with $350-million of annual funding.

We can bet that CBC will be getting their funding from the liberal government for their reporting the fake as well as bias news the liberals expect the citizens to accept without any questions.

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

The budget proposes $81.4-million over five years to create a redress system for Canadians whose names falsely match those on the no-fly list. Parents of children unfairly targeted by the no-fly list have been advocating for a redress system for more than two years. They are hoping the system will give wrongly flagged Canadians a redress number so they no longer face delays and discrimination at airports.

The budget proposed funding to replace VIA Rail’s cars and locomotives for use in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, though amounts were not released due to “an upcoming procurement.”

With legalization of cannabis set for late summer, Ottawa is spending another $62.5-million on public education campaigns on the dangers of drug use and $10-million on research, including assessing the impact of legalization on mental health. The new funding for public education – on top of a previously announced investment of $46-million – will target communities at risk and Indigenous organizations.

The budget included vague details on improving federal election leaders’ debates. The government claims “the way leaders’ debates have been negotiated have put at risk the structure and potential usefulness of leaders’ debates.” As such, it proposed providing $6-million over two years, repeated every election cycle, to “support a new process that would ensure that federal leaders’ debates are organized in the public interest.” The budget also floated the possibility of legislation on this matter.

The government is spending $191-million over five years to help to defray the cost of NAFTA and WTO legal challenges related to the ongoing softwood lumber dispute.

The search l went through to find anything that Trudeau has done for the middle class escapes form the 2018 budget, another year promises to help comes without any thought of making Canada strong. This is just another one of his promises not kept, will we ever see the liberals stand up for Canada l think not. l hope people will show how they feel about the liberal steam rolling machine going from coast to coast destroying the fabric of Canadian values, as well as the jobs we should have.